It’s a fine article. Hardy briefly lays out the history of shipping computer manufacturing overseas and talks with an executive about HP.

The Macalope doesn’t know for sure, but that could be what lead to the unforgivable sin in this piece, which comes here:

If Mr. Cook is bringing his computer assembly back to the United States, it will probably be for larger, lower-value goods that Apple wants to sell locally, said …

Said who? Who? Could? It? Be?

Three guesses and the first two don’t count.

… Rob Enderle, an analyst in San Jose, Calif., who has been following the industry for a quarter-century.

Yes, Rob Enderle, getting Apple wrong for a quarter century. If that’s not the catch-phrase of the eponymous Enderle Group, we need to start Google-bombing that now.

Not that it’s mentioned anywhere in the piece that Enderle’s client list is pretty much a one-to-one match with a list of Apple competitors, but one of Rob’s big-name clients is HP.

The Macalope doesn’t know what advice Enderle has been giving HP over the years, but whatever it was, it hasn’t exactly saved the company’s bacon. Or even its fakon. Or a strip of cardboard it sometimes chewed on. One that was not also fakon, the Macalope means. If Enderle’s advice was anything like his consistently wrong public pronouncements about Apple, then a case could be made for malpractice.

But the Macalope doesn’t think that’s the case at all. He has long maintained that Enderle’s Apple “opinions” are a charade designed to please his pals at HP, Dell, and Microsoft. He’s just practicing the oldest profession: consulting.

“Cook is looking to give Apple some good news. He doesn’t want people thinking about Apple as a declining company that Steve Jobs used to run.”

Because Apple’s been totally run off the rails in the last year. Haven’t you heard?

Enderle commits no huge infractions here, but the simple fact of the matter is that he should never be quoted in a piece about Apple. Ever. The sheer breadth of his wrongness about the company is well-documented by this writer alone.

People wonder why the Macalope, after all these years, still bothers with Enderle. When he stops getting quoted in publications like the New York Times, then we can start thinking about whether we still need to.